“I will try to give voice to a vitality intrinsic to materiality, in the process absolving matter from its long history of attachment to automatism or mechanism.”
(Bennett 2010, p. 3)
Through my exploration with hope Spinoza’s ‘conatus’ resonated in relationship to other philosophical propositions of hope. Pieper’s suggestion of hope as ‘the entelechy of the ongoing development of the person, of history, and of the community’ (Schumacher 2003, p.254) and hope as ‘aliveness’ or ‘potentiality-of-Being’ (Heidegger, 1927; Schumacher, 2003). Continental philosophers framed hope as an ‘actant’ in our lives that sought resolutions and materialised resistance to suffering; moving towards justice, ethical ways of being and suggesting the world is always in process as a ‘global-becoming’ (Massumi and Zournazi, 2002). Additionally, through Spinoza and Posthumanism perceiving ourselves as relational beings, entangled, interconnected and immanent as ‘bodies’, not only human, but non-human and more-than-human means hope could be perceived as an ‘essence’ of matter itself.
‘Conatus’ as a striving to exist or come into being entangled through ecologies of ‘bodies’ would position hope as an ‘affective’ and active impulsion and is ‘a power present in everybody’ (Bennett 2010, p.2). A power present in all matter perhaps, encountered consciously as a human ‘body’ through affect where we sense ‘the other’ and ourselves, feeling presence and receptivity as materiality, but also as beings of imagination, care and relational meaning-making. Through the ‘conative’ impulse and relational affect there are ripples and waves across ecologies of ‘bodies’ that are intrinsic to all Life, inextinguishable as Life is always becoming and adapting to every moment so that existence continues somewhere and somehow.
References:
Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: a political ecology of things.
Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time
Massumi and Zournazi (2002) Navigating Movements, in Hope: New Philosophies of Change
Schumacher, B. (2003) A Philosophy of Hope: Josef Pieper and the contemporary debate on hope
Spinoza, B. (2001) Ethics